


I Still Believe in Summer Days

by afewreelthoughts



Series: My Words Will Be Your Light [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, End of the World, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 13:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17940659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: One morning spent between two kings preparing for the end of the world.





	I Still Believe in Summer Days

**Author's Note:**

> ASOIAF Rare Pair Week, Day 4: Silks // Furs
> 
> Title lifted from "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles
> 
> I own nothing and make no money from this. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

Everyone Robb had ever met looked best in furs. His mother and father, his bannermen, Theon the day before he set off for Pyke, Arya and Sansa laughing in the snow that morning as winter descended around their home... and the King in the South, draped across his bed in nothing else. 

"Come here, I’m cold,” Renly said, burrowing even deeper into the pile of furs. 

“I’m yours to command, am I?” Robb said, walking towards him.  

“I only came North because I was told you’d keep me warm.” 

“I thought you came North to save the world?”

“Yes. And I need to be warm to do that.” 

Robb perched on the edge of his bed and ran a hand through Renly’s long hair. “How can you still be cold? The fire is going, the windows are closed, and I put twice as many covers on the bed.” 

“I’m not northern. It’s cold in here, and any other southron lord would agree.” 

Robb’s heart so ached at the sight of him, after nearly a year spent apart, that he found he could not continue to tease.

“I’m sorry. I forget how much the cold affects you.”

He hadn’t meant the innuendo, but, from the look on his face, Renly heard it. He always did, and never hesitated to whisper in Robb’s ear whenever one of his bannermen had the bad fortune to swear “by the Smith’s hammer” at a feast or explain how often he polished his sword. 

“As opposed to you Starks, who get  _long and hard_  in winter frosts?” Renly said with a grin.

“We might. You want to find out?”

Renly laughed, and Robb laughed with him. He had missed Renly, how with him it seemed as though it was only ever the two of them, their kingdoms melting away in his warm blue eyes. 

“We'll have a fur cloak made just for you. Would you like that?” Robb asked. 

“I think the animals that had their furs before liked them too.” Renly reached up to stroke his cheek. Even naked, he still wore his heavy rings, decadence clinging to him like a second skin. Robb knew how much Renly loved his fine clothes, and always brought more than enough when he came North, but Robb liked him best like this. Renly had allowed his hair and beard to grow since arriving in the North, which softened his face and made him look even more regal at the same time. It also made the few people in Winterfell who remembered King Robert wax nostalgic.

 _It’s so good to see that the kings have a friendship just like Lord Eddard and King Robert had!_  they would say, and Robb would blush scarlet, grateful for the hair on his cheeks that covered most of it.

"You joke, but you might be here for a long time,” Robb said. 

“King’s Landing will just have to make do without me.”

“You’re all right with that?”

“Yes, Stannis ruins lots of things, but I don’t suppose he’ll wreck all of the kingdoms while I’m gone.”

Every time Renly went south again after visiting Winterfell, Robb was soon after greeted with a long letter detailing everything his Hand had done wrong in his absence. None of it ever seemed that serious.

He ran a hand through Robb’s hair. “And this winter might be nothing, you know? Just some fairy stories made up by the wildlings." 

“Don’t say that. You know it’s not true,” Robb said. 

From what Jon had told them about the crisis at the Wall, none of them might last to see the spring. Despite it all, omens predicting the end of the world, armies preparing to defend Westeros against a supernatural enemy none of them knew how to fight, life still went on. Renly’s son, Cortnay Baratheon, First of His Name, had taken his first steps before his father had left for the North, Sansa and Arya were becoming women, Roslin gave birth to their first child, named Ned because there had been no question between them on that point, and the winter went on. It wouldn’t be long before Cortnay and Ned would be terrorizing the Red Keep, their mothers and the small council desperately chasing after them. It was hard to believe that if they failed, all of it could be gone. 

“Cortnay?” Robb had asked Renly when he lasted visited King’s Landing. “I thought your father’s name was Steffon."

“A king may do as he likes,” Renly had said, cradling his son in his arms. 

“And why did the king do  _this_?” 

“Margaery didn’t like the name Steffon.”

“I’m sure that’s the reason,” Robb said. 

“Because Cortnay Penrose raised me more than anyone else did,” he said quietly, as if afraid his child might hear him and disapprove. "Not a father to me, but close enough. It felt wrong to name my son after someone I never knew. And kings can do what they like.”

Robb had sent Roslin and baby Ned south, and Margaery was grateful to him for it, but Arya and Sansa had stubbornly refused to leave. 

“We’re stronger here,” Sansa had told him. “No matter what comes, we’re safest within the walls of Winterfell.”

He supposed she was right. 

Robb leaned down to stop Renly’s mouth with a kiss. “We can’t tell ourselves it will all be well if we don’t know that.”

“Well I can, and I will," Renly said and kissed him back. “Share your doom and gloom with someone else. I don’t like it."

Robb buried his nose in Renly’s hair, thick, silken and sweet-smelling. “All right. No more talk about death today.” 

****

“Good.”

They kissed until Robb began to felt warmth blossoming in his chest. 

“Are you still cold?” he asked.

“Not as much. And spring will come soon, and I’ll be better then."

“It snows in the summer up here, you know?” 

Renly's eyes widened, horrified. “It does not!” 

Robb laughed. 

Among the brown and grey furs on the bed, a flash of deep red emerged, the shirt that Renly had thrown off the night before. Robb had not seen it clearly in the dark. 

“This looks new.” Robb picked it up.

"It is."

“You had it made before coming here?”

Renly flopped back on the bedcovers. “You sound like Stannis.” He wrinkled his nose. “ _It’s extravagant, Renly! It’s a waste of money, Renly!_  As if tailors and seamstresses don’t deserve to work at the end of the world.” 

Robb wanted to agree with Stannis on this occasion, but the silk pooling in his hands, light as air, a deep crimson that shifted into shades of purple and black in shadow, was too lovely to call a waste

“Are these Tully colors?” He lifted up one cuff, woven through with dark blue ribbon.

"Yes, Stark ones are boring.”

Robb swallowed. Renly had had it made with him in mind. His family’s colors. "It’s very fine."

“Try it on."

Despite the warmth of the room, goosebumps rose on Robb’s skin as he threw off his wool shirt and pulled on the silk one. The feeling of it, cool and smooth and licking his skin, made him shiver. 

“It’s big,” Robb said. 

“Well yes, I’m bigger than you.”

Robb fell onto him, and Renly flipped him over, and they tousled like that until Robb had Renly’s wrists pinned to the bed, and the fur bedclothes were half on the floor. Robb was not sure if Renly let him win or not and not sure why it mattered, in these childish games no kings should play.

“I’ll have one just like it made for you when you come South."

“When?"

“After this is all over.”

Robb met Renly's eyes and wanted to tell him to stop tempting the gods with his arrogance, but knew he would not listen. And the press and tumble of their bodies, as well as the sight of the furs on his bare skin, made it hard to focus on their possible impending doom.

 

One of Renly’s hands crept up beneath his silk shirt and the other pulled at the laces of his breeches. He was always at his most serious when he teased, with his hands as well as his words. Robb carded his fingers through his lover's hair and kissed him until he felt giddy enough to make false promises. 

 

_Yes, I’ll come south with you again._

_Yes, we’ll live to see the spring._


End file.
